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Limpics
We went to see day one of the dressage, today. It was far too hot, and it rained torrentially, but other than that the weather was ok.
They had nifty little radio things that you could buy for a tenner, that gave you commentary as the tests were going on: very useful. Shame that they weren't mentioned in the leaflet that came with the tickets, and the commentator didn't mention them until after the first batch of riders had already finished. If anyone wants to borrow them until the paralympics, shout.
The programme is utterly pointless. I bought the daily one, on the grounds that the full one was far too thin to actually have any detail in it. The daily one also has no details about the events, it's just full of 'interesting' stats about the sports and photos of people who did well the day before. I did see some people who had actual lists of the competitors, but they didn't have them at the places selling the radios and programmes, and they didn't come with the tickets, so no idea where you were supposed to get them or how you were supposed to know they existed.
The range of food was superficially pretty good, but it's over-priced (£6 for a sausage inna bun), some of it (eg, nachos) looked really grim, and the fish and chip place was hugely busy. In fact, the only queue I saw all day that was bigger than the one for the fish and chip place at lunch time was the one for the water tap beforehand.
But, the dressage went very smoothly, no embarrassing waiting around for the riders, only one horse had a hissy fit (but, my, what a hissy fit it was! That's Canada out of the team contest!), and only three or four of the competitors got utterly drenched.
Oh, and the commentators ranged from pretty good (the radio guy, although I can't figure out where he was sitting: he didn't actually be able to see the arena, so he kept missing things), through fairly good (the guy doing the main announcements, between the tests) to utterly inane and dire (the perky woman interviewing members of the crowd / riders who knew naff all about horses and was intensely irritating).
We ducked out before the last rider, mostly because they'd announced that they would be letting people out in blocks and the thought of fighting upstream through the crowd to our bus stop was depressing.
There were a surprisingly large number of people not actually watching, just sitting outside on the grass. Odd.
They had nifty little radio things that you could buy for a tenner, that gave you commentary as the tests were going on: very useful. Shame that they weren't mentioned in the leaflet that came with the tickets, and the commentator didn't mention them until after the first batch of riders had already finished. If anyone wants to borrow them until the paralympics, shout.
The programme is utterly pointless. I bought the daily one, on the grounds that the full one was far too thin to actually have any detail in it. The daily one also has no details about the events, it's just full of 'interesting' stats about the sports and photos of people who did well the day before. I did see some people who had actual lists of the competitors, but they didn't have them at the places selling the radios and programmes, and they didn't come with the tickets, so no idea where you were supposed to get them or how you were supposed to know they existed.
The range of food was superficially pretty good, but it's over-priced (£6 for a sausage inna bun), some of it (eg, nachos) looked really grim, and the fish and chip place was hugely busy. In fact, the only queue I saw all day that was bigger than the one for the fish and chip place at lunch time was the one for the water tap beforehand.
But, the dressage went very smoothly, no embarrassing waiting around for the riders, only one horse had a hissy fit (but, my, what a hissy fit it was! That's Canada out of the team contest!), and only three or four of the competitors got utterly drenched.
Oh, and the commentators ranged from pretty good (the radio guy, although I can't figure out where he was sitting: he didn't actually be able to see the arena, so he kept missing things), through fairly good (the guy doing the main announcements, between the tests) to utterly inane and dire (the perky woman interviewing members of the crowd / riders who knew naff all about horses and was intensely irritating).
We ducked out before the last rider, mostly because they'd announced that they would be letting people out in blocks and the thought of fighting upstream through the crowd to our bus stop was depressing.
There were a surprisingly large number of people not actually watching, just sitting outside on the grass. Odd.
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We found at the archery that a great many people drifted off before the end -- clearly four hours of eliminations was a tad too much for most people. Leaving Lords we had no trouble because Lords is normally used to have many more people than this leave at once. Leaving the Olympic Park yesterday was fine because the park is set up so that unless you decide to walk -- as we will tomorrow -- directly from your venue to Stratford station, you can just leave when it suits you.
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The getting to the venue and back was the most tiring thing, especially as neither Eton Dorney nor the park and ride were signposted from the very complicated motorway junction, and we spent some time driving around saying "Do we want to go to Staines? I don't think so!"